Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Think.

This is an advert created by the UK government to
encourage people to quite simply wear a seatbelt.

The short clip pursues a “Consequences Template”
(Goldenberg et al, 1999), specifically an inverted consequences version which
highlights what could happen if the advice from the advert is not followed. By ignoring
the message of the film and not wearing a seatbelt, you could die. These
consequences are shown in quite graphic detail and in slow-motion so the viewer
has time to process exactly what is on the screen. It is not a surprising
finding that the longer a person is exposed to a stimulus, the better their
ability to recall it is (e.g. Laughery et al, 1971), and so using slow-motion
gives a greater chance the audience will remember the horrible details of how
this person died and that it was because they did not wear a seatbelt.

In addition to the display of these scenes a clear,
monotonous voiceover tells the story of what happened to Richard. This contributes
to the central route of persuasion in Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986)
Elaboration-Likelihood Model. The lack of strong peripheral cues, for example
an attractive person on the screen or hearing a person who uses varying pitch
and volume in speech, leaves the viewer to consider the content of what they
are being shown and told. Yes, a person was in a car collision and the results
were tragic, however the important information is that this was because he was
not wearing a seatbelt. Indeed, the campaign is blunt about telling people to “think”.

Research has shown that using the central route to
persuasion is more likely to result in a lasting attitude change (e.g. Petty
& Wegener, 1998). This is particularly important given the nature of this
topic, as it is obviously important for people to retain the value of wearing a
seatbelt as opposed to perhaps falling back into old habits after they have
forgotten about the advert and its message.

The clip begins with the voiceover “Richard didn’t want
to die, but he couldn’t stop himself”. After his story is told, the viewer is
brought into the situation and is asked “what’s stopping you?”. This commands
the whole attention of the audience as it is the only thing on screen and is
accompanied by silence. Burnkrant and Howard (1984) found that rhetorical
questions such as this are useful in encouraging more processing and elaboration
of message content. Therefore, this and the culmination of persuasive
techniques used in the clip lead to one inevitable conclusion. What’s stopping
you? Nothing.